


the inconsistency of all human characters

by haemodye



Series: The Importance of Dynamics [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Daydreaming, Fantasizing, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, One Shot, POV Steve Rogers, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Queer Themes, Skin Hunger, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Steve Rogers Feels, Touch-Starved, Unreliable Narrator, serious interrogation of A/B/O societal norms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemodye/pseuds/haemodye
Summary: Steve knows Tony's not ready to complete their bond. He understands why. But that doesn't prevent him from aching to touch his soulmate every waking minute.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: The Importance of Dynamics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058945
Comments: 19
Kudos: 189
Collections: Captain America/Iron Man Bingo





	the inconsistency of all human characters

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no self control I guess, so here's another short fic in this sad!soulmates 'verse. This is for my "Touch Starved" bingo square because it's in line with the last two I wrote, and it seemed to mesh quite well with the setup for the first fic in this series. I tried to write this so it stands alone, which I think I did? There wasn't much to miss in the first one haha.
> 
> Casual reminder that Steve is an unreliable narrator before people jump in yelling about anything he says lol. Steve's opinions not mine/vice versa.
> 
> Cws: negative thoughts about the self, homophobia (period-typical, as it comes from Howard), blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to domestic violence

Steve’s halfway through the Sunday Times Crossword on a Tuesday afternoon, but he’s finding it hard to focus. Generally, the crossword is passed from him to Bruce to Tony, in ascending order of ‘who’s the most likely to solve this.’ He’s stuck on 14 down, but putting the paper back on the kitchen table for Bruce to pick at means giving up, and well. The less said about his ability to do that, the better.

There’s a low curse from the centre of the room, and Steve gives in to the urge he’s been fighting for three hours and glances up to look at his soulmate.

The mere thought of the word sets his skin ablaze. He tamps it down ruthlessly. “Need help?”

Tony doesn’t answer. He’s kneeling on the floor, and bent backwards like he’s doing the limbo, his head between the Iron-Man armour’s thighs. It’s a shockingly suggestive vision after he’s spent the better part of the morning desperately trying not to look at Tony, and Steve bites down hard on his lip and curls his hands into fists over his knees.

 _Get it together, solider_.

He breathes out, carefully, and goes back to his crossword, but the letters blur on the page in front of him. His hands are shaking, he realises, and he closes his eyes and takes a slow breath, counting to ten.

 _One_. Stalk Tony across New York without ever saying a word to him.

 _Two_. Let inexplicable jealous anger boil up inside of him without ever talking to the man.

 _Three_. Be inexcusably rude to him while he’s trying to make small talk on the flight back to the helicarrier.

 _Four_. Completely lose his temper in the helicarrier lab (part 1) which, in retrospect, was because Tony was flirting with Bruce and Steve couldn’t stand to look at them getting along when Tony couldn’t even meet his eye.

 _Five_. Completely lose his temper in the helicarrier lab (part 2) which was probably because he’d managed to figure out that Tony wasn’t impressed with him and the alpha in him couldn’t bear the thought.

_Six-_

Steve sucks in a shaky breath, rubbing a hand over his closed eyes.

The thing is, it hadn’t been a big deal to Posture before he went into the ice.

If someone cared enough to ask Steve if he thought the future would be this different, he might laugh and never stop. Because it wasn’t the cars, or the airplanes, or even Tony’s mind-shattering science that was unbelievable. It was the fact that every social interaction before he went into the ice had been clear-cut, because dynamics said more than simple, clumsy human words ever could. It had been how he led the Howling Commandos—a strong streak of empathy, enough to be able to read someone’s scent and know exactly what they needed to be effective in the field. Bucky’s acidic beta stress scent said he wasn’t sleeping well, and so Steve knew that he needed someone to sit by the fire and razz him until his cheeks ached because that was the only way to stave off the nightmares. The sweet and sour scent of Jim’s wavering fury/fear usually meant that there had been more bad news from back home about the internment camps. Steve had known that meant Jim could probably use a quiet walk around the base, with the reassurance that his captain wouldn’t let him be sent packing and locked up on a bullshit dishonourable discharge. He’d known all of his men, down to the barest fluctuation of their base scents. It was an easy intimacy as old as humanity: to know your pack, and care for them, as was the alpha’s eternal honour.

Walking around in the future is like being a horse with blinders on. He is only able to get the faintest top-notes from most people’s scents, and he suspects that’s only because of the serum. Everyone wears blockers now, not just people close to their heat or rut. It’s like one of his senses had been completely excised from him as he slept. He has no idea what anyone wants from him. Steve is no good with words, unless he’s giving a speech. He’s floundering blind in a new world with no anchor, no pack, and a soulmate that can only barely stand to be in a room with him without shying away like a skittish horse.

It isn’t like SHIELD hadn’t given him pamphlets about modern gender and sexuality dynamics. Proper conduct. Harassment. They had. Of course they had. But it was one thing to have read that, and another to understand, suddenly and on a deep, visceral level, that he had violated a significant cultural norm. He can remember with perfect clarity the feeling of standing over Tony, faces inches apart, snarling like an animal into Tony’s deceptively calm, faux-casual smile. Tony’s expression had flattened, then: disgust, or perhaps disdain was a better word. Like Steve was something disgusting stuck to the bottom of his overpriced shoes.

“It’s no longer acceptable in America,” Bruce had explained to him. The quiet, muted way he inhabited the world was more noticeable when Steve had seen how he bloomed open for Tony. His jealousy curdled inside of him, thick and acrid in the back of his throat as he swallowed down the urge to growl. “Outside of the U.S., that’s not necessarily the case. But it’s become standard for people in the so-called First World to tamp down on outward primal expressions of their dynamic. Dynamics are considered private, and many people in the U.S. are on suppressants year round, now. Many omegas and alphas live as betas. So Posturing, it’s, uh…”

“Barbaric?” Steve had asked, and Bruce winced. He rocked a hand back and forth. “Can I ask…”

Bruce nodded encouragingly at him.

“Why?” he demanded. It sounded almost plaintive in his ears, but he couldn’t quite get past his feeling of helplessness. Not because it was foreign, but because he knew it all too well from the time before the serum, when he was small and weak. He feels like a relic pulled off of a shelf. Something good to look at and remember, but just like Tony said on the helicarrier: not of use.

Bruce smiled softly at him. “I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s not an equal system, Steve. Consider the impact your pheromones have on a room as an alpha. Not just any alpha—an enhanced one, who has put higher-ranked officers on their knees just by growling at them. After the sexual revolution in the 60’s and 70’s, blockers were the only way omegas were able to have any kind of social mobility on their own merits. Imagine working with an omega in the field, having to send them out into battle. No matter what kind of alpha you are, you’re fighting your instincts. Imagine an alpha supervisor at a job having to criticise the work of their omega subordinate and forcing them into Obeisance without meaning to. After Title IX, that’s a potential lawsuit that provides a company incentive not to hire mixed dynamic teams. Omegas and alphas now work together because of cheap and easy access to blockers, and that right was fought for. Fiercely. Omegas’ right to work, to their bodies, to positions of power is questioned even now. The activists and theorists of the sexual revolution argued that dynamics are an evolutionary trait that’s stopped being quite so helpful, and instead gets in the way of things. Blockers are the only reason omegas have been allowed into med school, the army, any number of places. It was how the Equal Rights Amendment got passed in ’72. So not wearing them, being against the idea of them, Posturing or Obeisance in public…these things are seen as a very specific kind of political statement.”

Steve studied Bruce as he realised that he’d been speaking for a long time. He sucked in a breath, then offered Steve a sheepish smile.

"Sorry."

“I make you uncomfortable,” Steve realised. “By not wearing blockers. It makes you nervous. You feel strongly about this, because you’re an omega.”

Bruce blinked at him. “What makes you say that?” There was no offence in his tone—just pure, scientific curiosity.

“I can smell a little, even through the blockers,” Steve admitted, and Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “You got real passionate, so your scent spiked. I didn’t mean to. I just can’t help it.”

“It’s alright,” Bruce said.

Steve looked down at his hands. “So when we argued, and I let my anger flood the room, that was…offensive.”

Bruce sighed and patted Steve awkwardly on the shoulder. It was the first time anyone had touched him in days, and the contact was startling. The warm imprint left by his hand resonated through Steve’s body: an echoic wave of simple camaraderie that let him breathe for what felt like the first time since he’d stepped into the tower.

“You’ll adjust,” Bruce told him.

He’d said it kindly enough, but it was too late for that. He’d already violated the most basic rules of both biology and society. He’d shown the worst possible side of himself to the one person in the world that was supposed to love him unconditionally.

That night, Steve went back to his room and pulled up whatever books and documentaries he could find on the sexual revolution. He learned about birth control, and blockers, and Anita Hill. He read the court briefs for the ERA and Title IX. The more he read, the quicker the ball of anxious confusion in his stomach turned to lead. He’d tried to get Tony to Submit—now called showing Obeisance—to him in a professional environment, which was _against the law_. It was considered gender discrimination in the US now. Put in simpler terms, Steve had acted like a bully.

It was no wonder Tony could barely even look at him.

“Can you give me a hand?”

Steve snaps his eyes back up to Tony, schooling his expression, but Tony isn’t looking at him. He’s straining, his biceps standing out in long, lean lines as he attacks the place where the armour’s thigh attaches to its groin with a small tool that doesn’t look like any sort of screwdriver Steve recognises. There are different words for each piece of armour, but Steve doesn’t know them.

In another world, one where Steve walked right up to Tony and introduced himself like a proper gentleman, shook his hand and full-named himself and Tony smiled at him like he was everything he’d ever wanted, Tony would teach him every piece. He’d guide Steve’s hands over the armour, hands laced together, and murmur the name of each part into Steve’s ear-

Steve shudders all over, shaking his head to clear away the fantasy.

“K,” Tony grunts, sounding annoyed, and Steve realises that Tony had asked him a question.

“I offered to help you,” Steve tries to explain, but it comes out wrong. Gruff, maybe, or accusatory.

Tony frowns. He pulls up out of his backwards bend, and the thin tank top he’s wearing does nothing to disguise the muscle underneath. Steve has never wanted to touch someone so much in his life.

“You did?” Tony asks. He wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of one hand, then fixes Steve with a sceptical expression. “When?”

“Not just-” Steve stops himself just in time. He trails off, then laughs a little helplessly. He stares down at his hands.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You just thought of something,” Tony insists, and Steve quirks a small smile. Tony’s hyper-focussed attention is a beautiful thing. He’s desperately wanted a piece of it for himself for weeks. So of course he’s getting it at the absolute worst time. He’s good at that. Always in the right place at the wrong time.

Steve smiles wryly, trying not to let his bitterness show. “I don’t think you’ll like it very much.”

Tony sits up and folds his legs in front of him. He tilts his head to the side, considering, and one long, grease-stained tendon stands out in his throat. Steve swallows, watches a bead of sweat slide down and settle in the hollow at the base there. His mouth flattens into a thin line.

“I reminded you of my father,” he says.

“I didn’t say anything-” Steve protests, heart leaping into his chest, but Tony waves a lazy hand. It stops him cold.

“Relax, Capsicle,” he says, and Steve frowns instinctively at the name. “You don’t have to pretend you didn’t know him.”

“Got the idea he wasn’t very good to you,” Steve says carefully. “Not that I’m altogether surprised to hear it. Not everyone should be a father.” He sucks in a breath, realising what he sounds like. “Not that I mean he was a bad man, he was a friend, I just mean-”

“Calm down before you hurt yourself,” Tony snorts, and Steve chances a glance up at him. Tony’s using a dirty shop rag to wipe the worst of the oil off of his fingertips. He’s smiling, if only the smallest bit. “You’re just digging the hole deeper.”

Steve doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or resigned. “I’m not so good at talking,” he manages. Surely Tony’s noticed that by now.

“Don’t worry your pretty blonde head about it,” Tony says, and Steve can feel the back of his neck heating. He knows Tony says things like that all the time. He doesn’t mean anything by it; you don’t call alphas pretty. But still, even the hint that Tony might find any part of him appealing hits something deep in him. His heart kicks in his chest. “Here, come lift this for me.”

Steve gets up and comes to hover awkwardly behind Tony, holding his hands stiffly at his sides. Silently, Tony shows him what he needs Steve to do: lift the armour’s unlocked left leg up and out, so that the inside of its thigh is exposed for Tony’s perusal. Steve would love to watch what he’s doing, maybe ask some questions, but the position is so suggestive that he can’t bear to. Instead he lets his gaze wander around the room almost sightlessly, taking in all of the unfinished projects and things he can’t fathom the purpose of. His soulmate might as well be a wizard, for all he understands about it.

Before, he would have been delighted to know that his soulmate was a mad inventor. He’s always loved science-fiction and fantasy. Now, it’s just one more way that he’s not good enough.

Tony is silent as he works. It’s one of the only times he is: all of that manic, whirlwind energy focussed in, a hurricane narrowed down into a tornado. In the beginning, he’d blasted music so loud Steve’s head ached, but once Steve started spending the afternoons down here he’d turned it down to more manageable levels, or put on headphones. It was such a minimal thing, but it means a lot to Steve, because it shows that Tony is trying. Despite everything, he’s willing to make concessions, however small.

“My dad did his best, but he was a man of his time.”

Steve blinks, surprised, and turns his head to look down at Tony. All he can see is the dark mop of his hair as he does something meticulous with the innards of the groin plating.

“Like me?” Steve says, trying his best to hide his bitterness. By the huff of air that escapes Tony, he’s not sure he succeeds.

“Depends on how you react to the rest of my story I suppose,” Tony says. He’s carefully nonchalant, and Steve braces himself for whatever doozy of a sentence he’s about to be subjected to. “My father caught me in bed with the beta son of a competitor.”

Steve stays silent.

“Not a promising reaction,” Tony says evenly, and Steve can’t help but huff a laugh.

“Well,” he says, “depends on what he was sore about.” He doesn’t even know Tony’s dynamic, but in almost any circumstance, he can see how that could be a bad thing.

Tony’s startled into his own quiet puff of laughter. The sound of it makes Steve ache. “All of it,” he says, tilting his head up a little to grin at Steve from under the fringe of his hair. It’s such a lovely look on him that Steve can’t manage to breathe, and he doesn’t know what his face does, but whatever it is makes Tony turn back to his work, the smile falling from his face. He sighs. “He asked if I’d been pretending, with all the omega and beta women I’d been with. I said no.”

Steve wants to shift on his feet, but the work Tony’s doing looks delicate. There’s wires and tiny little gears involved. He doesn’t want to mess anything up, so he settles for shifting the weight carefully into one hand and then stretching his fingers a little. He waits for Tony to gather the strength to finish his story.

“I think about it a lot,” Tony admits quietly, and Steve turns to look down at him, intrigued. All he can see is the barest sliver of Tony’s face; his temple, his ear, a bit of eyelash. His expression is placid. “He said it was ok to have those kinds of feelings privately, but I couldn’t act on them, because it reflected badly on him, the business, my mother-...” Tony huffs, blowing some of the hair out of his eyes. A single, perfect curl falls back onto his brow, and Steve wants nothing more than to push his finger through it. He puts both his hands back on the leg of the armour, where it’s safe to touch as much as he likes. “It was really careful phrasing, y’know? And I was smart, even then. I knew what he was implying. But I was so…angry, I guess. So I told him just because he’d spent his whole life in the closet, doesn’t mean I had to.”

“ _Howard_...?” Steve says, wondering. Howard, the irrepressible alpha with a girlfriend in every state. “Wow.”

Tony chuckles. “Yeah, well. He was furious. We fought. It got a little physical.” He shrugs, an elegant movement of his shoulders that lets Steve see some of the lovely lines of his back bunch and shift. Steve wants so many impossible, stupid things. “That was a few weeks before he died.”

 _Oh, God._ “That’s rotten, Tony,” Steve says, as earnestly as he knows how. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” Tony says dismissively, tossing his head in a lazy nod. Steve gets the feeling he would have flapped a hand at him if his were free. “We’ve all got regrets. Even you, Rocky, perfect as you are.”

“I’m not perfect,” Steve interjects, but Tony ignores him.

“I wish I’d been more understanding,” Tony confesses. Steve isn’t sure he even remembers he’s talking to Steve now. It’s almost like he’s just talking to get it out: excise this wound that lives inside of him, clearly still bleeding even after all these years. “I’m sure it took a lot for him to share that with me. Looking back, I can see that he was doing the best he could. He loved me in his own way.”

“I’m sure he did,” Steve says softly. He can’t imagine how Howard could have done anything else.

“That kind of thing is a poison, y’know? Keeping it locked up inside. It ruins people from the inside out, when you bottle that shit up.” Tony pauses, as if waiting for Steve to reply, but Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that. Tony laughs, then: quiet, almost sad. “I just wish I could have shown him the future.”

“That’s no excuse,” Steve says, and Tony’s head snaps up to look at him. His eyes are focussed, gleaming with curiosity, and Steve finds himself blushing for no good reason other than that Tony’s looking at him. “We had, uh.” He clears his throat. “Gay people? Back in my day. Howard had the power to create and change the future. Just like you.”

Tony stares at him for longer than is polite, and Steve meets his gaze with his pulse thundering so loud he’s almost surprised Tony can’t hear it. He sets his jaw, tries to school his face into something less lovesick, and Tony’s expression shifts. His brow smooths out, and he turns back to his work. “Yeah, well. Guess he didn’t want to see it. A future that included queer liberation was already halfway here when he died.”

“Even the living get left behind.”

“Wow, that’s a dark takeaway from that story,” Tony laughs, and Steve revels in it. There’s an easiness to him that Steve’s only ever witnessed when he’s working with Bruce.

“Sorry,” Steve says, swallowing.

“Don’t be sorry, Cap.” Tony rolls his shoulders, as though shaking off the conversation, then ducks out from under the armour. “Thanks for the help.”

“No problem.”

Tony gestures for him to put the leg down, so Steve heads back over to his perch on the couch. He picks up the newspaper again, and the room lapses into a comfortable kind of quiet. Tony’s music shifts up in volume a few clicks, and Steve glances up at him from across the workshop. He watches as Tony falls headfirst back into his working fugue.

 _Alpha,_ he thinks, suddenly. The thought settles inside of him like a stone falling to the bed of a lake. _He’s an alpha_.

Steve blinks. He waits to feel something about it. Shock, maybe. A slight sense of disappointment. But he feels… _settled_ , and that self-knowledge sparks and ignites in his chest: a small ember of hope. He closes his eyes, leans back into the couch, and breathes in deep. Coconut, copper, electricity. Fresh wind. Wet earth. The old story about Benjamin Franklin’s key and kite comes to mind, and a smile breaks over his face. Tony, encased in metal, streaking through a storm. A comet. Brilliance and light.

He closes his eyes and lets the memory of metal under his fingertips, strong and slab-cut like human muscle, linger like chocolate on the tongue. He imagines Tony under his hands in the armour, the plates opening up like a flower. Skin. Warm, olive skin.

His dreams are the best they’ve been since he woke up in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing short things is hard and I am not quite confident doing it, but alas. I tend to use fic as a sandbox for experimentation, and I'm trying to learn brevity lol.
> 
> I also have the outline for another, longer, presently unfinished fic in this series because I have no self control! Does it count as writing short fics if I just keep writing fics in the same world? Probably not! But, there will be more, and eventually things will be less sad, so.
> 
> And eventually I will return to my languishing WIPs… Sorry everyone. I've hit a wall and am doing my best. It's been a shite year lol, and And The Body has been particularly hard for me to write with the US Govt being as fucked as it is…*sigh*.
> 
> Aaaanyway, let me know your thoughts! As always, I love comments and discussing meta and will reply to them all.
> 
> edit: I also know that some of what Bruce is saying could be construed as imperialist/nationalistic. I'm imagining that there are less fucked up A/B/O dynamics that are indigenous elsewhere that he's witnessed, but he's not about to go deep that deep into Sex and Gender Around the World here. Steve isn't ready for that yet haha. Bruce is thus intentionally speaking from an American Lens. Just an FYI for folks who might care about that sort of thing.


End file.
